Avnet Technology Solutions and Hitachi Data Systems would like to invite you for the Hitachi Data Systems Unified Storage Launch on April the 24th 2012 at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium.

We got Googling to try to find out more.

The evidence

A Proact webpage says: "Hitachi Unified Storage scales 2x longer than the previous generation and delivers up to 3x more. ... The system makes it possible to create a common resource for the storage of your structured and unstructured data, with a unique way to manage [it]."

In the Hitachi APAC partners training schedule (PDF) there was a course, TCI2193, slated to take place in Singapore from 29 to 31 March, entitled "Transitioning to Hitachi Unified Storage," with another scheduled for 2 to 4 April.

Last night we hosted a Pre-Launch event for Hitachi's newest product, the Hitachi Unified Storage Platform. The party was a great success and we want to extend a special word of thanks to Mel Tungate, HDS' Global Product Strategist, as his presentation on Hitachi's new platform was very informative to all in attendance.

An HDS VSP update slide deck (PDF) mentions the HUS, positioned below the flagship VSP aray, and names three products: HUS110, HUS120, and HUS150. It calls HUS an "Advanced Midrange Storage System." There is no mention of HDS' existing AMS (Adaptable Modular Storage) mid-range storage array product on this slide, number three in the deck, implying that the HUS product replaces the AMS product.

All quiet on the HDS front

HUS series better management enables companies to realize the efficiency and investment protection, allowing cost-effective performance and to ensure uninterrupted operation, as well as to support multi-protocol unified storage systems.

There are three HUS products: the HUS110, supporting up to 130 hard disk drives (HDD) and up to 360TB; the HUS130 with 264 HDDS and up to 792TB; and the HUS150 going up to 2.88PB with 960 HDDs. The HUS110 can be upgraded to the HUS130 which can be upgraded to the HUS150.

The disk drives are 300GB, 600GB or 900GB, 2.5-inch, 10,000rpm SAS with 200GB and 400GB SSDs supported as well. We understand these are MLC flash drives. There can be 15 (HUS110), 30 (HUS130) and 80 (HUS150) hot spare drives. The HDD interface is 6Gbit/s SAS.

The host protocol supported are 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel, iSCSI over GigE and 1GigE, and FCoE over 10GigE. This is called unified storage but there is no mention of any file access on this web page.

Other text on this web page tells us the offering will include:

Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE, including support for Multi Protocol.

More than twice the existing Enhanced Sequential I/O (7Gbit/s) performance.

High availability, disaster recovery and business continuity, compliance.

Incremental support and bi-directional replication.

Replication support for up to 8:1.

That's all we know, for now. There's no mention of file access and no mention of cloud. The AMS product set is getting a little long in the tooth and its replacement is not surprising. There will be an obvious comparison to EMC's VNX arrays and also, El Reg would imagine, to NetApp's FAS3000 and FAS2000 products.

We understand HDS has some VSP features coming to help its use as a mainframe storage array and El Reg storage desk will update you as soon as we know more. ®